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Yellow-Throated Woodland Warbler | Phylloscopus ruficapilla
Roodkapboszanger | Mosquitero Gorjigualdo
The Yellow-Throated Woodland Warbler is a small, lively leaf warbler of the montane and mistbelt forests of the east of the region, with a rufous crown and a bright yellow throat. It is a regular core member of mixed foraging flocks in the middle stratum of forest and gives itself away by its high, clear song.
Voice
The song is a high, clear, rapid series, tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee, often running into a short, shivering trill, sip-sip-sirrrrr; also alternating high and lower notes, tsip-tsew, tsip-tsew. The call is a thin, falling swee-oo or a sharp tsip, often heard from mixed flocks.
Recording: Maarten Sluijter — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, compact, with short, rounded wings and a fairly short tail. Crown, forehead and cheeks are warm rufous to chestnut, separated from the throat by a yellow supercilium that is brightest above the eye. Throat and upper breast are bright lemon-yellow, the belly greyish white and the flanks greyish; the undertail coverts are yellow. The back is olive-green, and wings and tail are green-edged. The bill is fine and dark with a paler lower mandible, and the legs are pale brown. The sexes are alike; juveniles have a duller, more olive crown. It moves quickly through the foliage, flutters and hangs from twigs, and flicks its wings and tail.
Confusion species
Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus, a summer visitor, lacks the rufous crown, has longer wings with an obvious primary projection and a pale supercilium, and forages mainly in open woodland and gardens. Laura's Woodland Warbler Phylloscopus laurae has an olive-green, not rufous, crown and lives in miombo and gallery forest in Zambia and Angola; the two may meet only in north-eastern Zambia. Yellow-Throated Apalis Apalis flavigularis and Bar-Throated Apalis Apalis thoracica have a long, graduated tail with white or pale outer feathers and a dark breast band. White-eyes such as Cape White-Eye Zosterops virens have a white eye-ring and live in groups.
Habitat
Afromontane and mistbelt forest, also mature forest edges, wooded ravines and dense riverine forest in the mountains; in the south also coastal and lowland forest, especially in winter, when part of the population moves to lower altitudes. It forages in the middle stratum and lower canopy, usually in mixed flocks with apalises, white-eyes, flycatchers and tchagras.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region in eastern South Africa: the forests of the Eastern Cape (including the Amatola Mountains), KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo (the northern Drakensberg escarpment with Magoebaskloof and Woodbush); further in Eswatini, very locally in Lesotho, in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, the montane forests of Mozambique (Gorongosa, Chimanimani, Namuli, Mabu), the highlands of Malawi (from Mulanje and Zomba to Viphya and Nyika), and in Zambia only on the Nyika Plateau and in the Mafinga Mountains. Beyond the region in the mountains of Tanzania and south-eastern Kenya.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Year-round; best found by walking forest trails in montane forest in the morning and watching for mixed flocks, for instance at Magoebaskloof, Hogsback, Karkloof, the Vumba or on the Zomba Plateau. The high, shivering trill is the best lead; follow it until the bird appears in the foliage and check the rufous head.
Conservation status
Not threatened and fairly common in suitable forest. The species does depend on indigenous forest and disappears where that is fragmented by logging, plantations or fire; in South Africa the isolated escarpment forests are therefore important.
Scientific name
Phylloscopus ruficapilla | (Sundevall, 1850)
Sundevall described the species in 1850 as Pogonocichla ruficapilla; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Phylloscopus was introduced in 1826 by Boie. Phylloscopus is Greek, from phullon 'leaf' and skopos 'seeker', from skopeō 'to watch': the bird that searches the foliage. ruficapilla comes from the Latin rufus, 'red', and capillus, 'hair of the head' — for the rufous crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from Durban, South Africa.